About Urbanista At Home

The idea for this blog started back when I was a teenager and I started getting into hobbies that were traditionally thought of as “house-wife hobbies”. You know the types of activities I’m talking about: baking, sewing, party planning, home decorating, scrapbooking, and all the many sorts of activities generally thought of as “crafts”. While I loved the creativity and productivity that went in to these sorts of “house-wife” activities, I certainly didn’t fit the stereotype of a 1950s suburban homemaker living in green-lawned suburbs on the city outskirts.

I definitely admire women who support their family from home and love the idea that every woman should have a choice to live her life and support her family in a variety of roles, from homemaker to working mother. However, to this point in my life in my twenties, I haven’t had the life experience to be able to personally identify with the“suburban homemaker” role. Although I’m now living just outside Vancouver proper (although still within Greater Vancouver,) I’ve lived almost my whole life in urban Vancouver, about a 20 minute walk from what is thought of as the “downtown-core”. I went to an “inner-city” high school, and lived at home with my parents while attending a university just a half hour away. Now that I’ve graduated with my Bachelor of Arts in Health Science, I commute daily to my health research job in the same busy downtown area I had grown up exploring. I’ve always identified with being “urban”, and love the busy, noisy, ever-changing atmosphere of being a city dweller.

However, even with all the general busy-ness that comes with working full time and juggling family and social life, those “house-wife hobbies” have been some of the activities that have kept me happy and sane. There is nothing that better helps me take my mind off the stresses of work (and life in general) than spending an hour baking cookies, or an evening of scrapbooking with friends. For this reason, I wanted to start this blog, something devoted to those little creative, at-home activities that I love so much.

With the entries you’ll find in this blog, I wanted to show that even if you think you defy the stereotypical view of a 1950s “home-maker” and instead identify as a modern and trendy “urbanista”, it’s still a whole lot of fun to take up the activities traditionally associated with the June Cleavers and Stepford Wives of the world. I am hoping that “Urbanista at Home” can be a place to share ideas, thoughts and comments on many creative “at-home” activities for the urban-at-heart.